Hymnary Friends,

As our fall/winter fund drive winds down, please consider a gift today to
support the work of Hymnary.org. We're behind where we have been in past years with this
drive, and we are hoping to catch up a little between now and January 1, 2019!

Please know that we want to keep Hymnary (the most complete database of North
American hymnody on the planet) going for many years to come. Your donations help us
do that. Even small amounts help, and they also let us know you're behind us and
support what we do.

Click the Donate button below to be taken to a secure giving site. Or you can
make your tax-deductible contribution by sending a check to Hymnary.org at 3201 Burton SE,
Grand Rapids, MI 49546.

Texts

Notes

This song was writ­ten while Steb­bins was help­ing Dr. George Pen­te­cost in evan­gel­is­tic meet­ings in Wor­ces­ter, Mass­a­chu­setts: During those meet­ings, one of the sub­jects preached up­on was the "New Birth." While pre­sent­ing the truth, en­forc­ing it by re­fer­ring to var­i­ous pass­ag­es of Scrip­ture, Dr. Pen­te­cost quot­ed our Lord’s words to Ni­co­dem­us, "Ver­i­ly, ver­i­ly, I say un­to thee, ye must be born again"…It oc­curred to me that by tak­ing the line "Ver­i­ly, ver­i­ly, I say un­to thee," from the third verse, and put­ting it with the line, "Ye must be born again," and by trans­fer­ring the word "I" from the mid­dle of the first line to the be­gin­ning, so it would read, "I ver­i­ly, ver­i­ly, say un­to thee, Ye must be born again," those pas­sag­es would then fall in­to rhyth­mic­al form, and by the use of some re­pe­ti­tions could be made avail­a­ble for a mu­sic­al set­ting, and al­so for a chor­us to the hymn, if some suit­a­ble vers­es could be found…I spoke to Rev­er­end…Sleep­er, one of the pas­tors of the ci­ty who some­times wrote hymns, of my im­press­ion and asked him if he would write me some vers­es on the sub­ject. He act­ed at once on my sug­gest­ion and soon af­ter came to me with the hymn…Be­fore the meet­ings closed a mu­sic­al set­ting was made. George Stebbins, Mem­oirs and Rem­i­nis­cenc­es